The United Nations notes that water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water. By 2025 two-thirds of the world's population could be under water stress conditions as a result of population growth and other factors. Water, especially potable water, is essential for all socio-economic developments and for maintaining a healthy population. As populations increase across the globe they call for an increased allocation of clean water for use, resulting in increased water scarcity.
A significant amount of water may be conserved merely by addressing the loss of water or degradation in water quality in systems caused by leaks or other adverse effects. Thus, one method of addressing water scarcity and conserve resources is to improve the operation and monitoring of the utility networks used to deliver water, such as by faster and more accurate detection of leaks and other events occurring in such networks. Several systems currently exist to facilitate improved network monitoring in water utility networks. For example, commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 7,920,983, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MONITORING RESOURCES IN A WATER UTILITY NETWORK” which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety, describes sophisticated systems and methods for detecting anomalies in water utility networks using statistical and analytical techniques, some of which are in use by the assignee of the present invention, TaKaDu Ltd. Other systems available from other companies, such as those available from ABB Group or IBM Corp., also provide some improvements to anomaly detection in water utility networks.
One way in which the operation and monitoring of water utility networks may be further improved is by making better use of data from Geographical Information Systems (“GIS”s or “GIS systems”) and asset management systems. As known to those of skill in the art, a GIS integrates, stores, and displays geographic information about a network or system laid out in a physical environment. Applications using GIS allow users to create interactive queries, review spatial information, edit data and maps, and present the results of these operations in a graphical user interface. Further description and details of GIS systems may be found in “Getting Started with Geographic Information Systems,” Second Edition by Keith C. Clarke, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. As is also known to those of skill in the art, asset management systems store information about physical components of a network or system such as a water utility network, such as pipes or joints, and are used in the operation and management of networks such as in fixing network components or in ordering new or replacement components. Commercially available asset management systems used to manage water utility network assets are available from a variety of entities, as known to those of skill in the art.
Water utilities (or other network operators) currently use data from GIS and asset management systems to display the physical layout of their distribution networks and identify characteristics of individual assets in the networks. Often times, GIS data is merely displayed and not used for automated analysis and functions. The usage of GIS data has great potential for planning network improvements, continuous on-line monitoring, and improving the understanding of a network's current configuration. However, effective use of GIS and asset data is not being made in current systems that monitor utility networks.
As such, there exists a need for improved systems and methods for automated modeling and analysis of networks and network components using GIS and asset management systems. The present invention provides for improved analysis and usage of GIS data in utility network monitoring systems.